I think most of you won't remember me or don't know me yet.. I'm the guy that fixed up the smg viewmodel for iron sights, made the crystal for DaMaN's return_c17 series and optimized one of the return_c17 maps for him.. apart from playing OC night and day (oh how I loved it) and having a great time in teh SUP3R HOUWSE on Tysn's map with some of you.
Actually I was just playing OC again in the last few days (really hard to do that since the servers are empty most of the time) because I'm sick and spending most of the time at home. Then I managed to get Hammer back up running (a pain in the arse to correct all the directories since I have a new computer) and so I sat there with a map I once started to throw together, of which I never knew what the story would be and how to continue.. actually it ended up as some kind of test map back in the days..

So now I'm looking for someone inspiration to help me get back into map-making. Maybe you guise got some ideas..
Right now I'm still learning some of the old stuff again because I have forgotten things, haven't been doing this for a long time..

Next question, what's a popular and not very hard-to-use modeling tool right now? XSI doesn't exist anymore and the Source Addon doesn't seem to work with the new SoftImage Sotware that has replaced it. As I was sometimes making models and stuff I think it'd be a good choice to keep that up.

Time to breathe some life into that mod again.

So here you go with what I already threw together there:

As you can see, it's just some thoughts and some brushes thrown together whenever I had a little idea and some spare time to see how it looks and works.
Oh, and I made that animated outhouse, too. The stone buttons there are still just a test setup for the opening door.

Blender is the most popular free 3D editor that is being used nowdays, and some of their features surpass the ones of 3DS Max (although all the professionals went to Maya). Their interface, although is still confusing, got vastly improved, so is easier to understand and learn. There are several "complete" videotutorials about how to use it for Source, go look them.

About Source and Hammer, all become unstable after the SteamPipe update, so don't get surprised if you ragequit after a while.

Well, it has been a while since I saw a map which enforces puzzle resolving rather than combat, so you could try that. On some parts, it reminds me of some Tysn maps.

I always liked doing puzzles AND killing stuff, so that's maybe what I will do.. I guess I just have to gather some ideas and think up a task or story or something so I can continue with thoughts about the setting in total and then pile up some brushes, models and NPCs to make a map out of them. Maybe I have to somehow get back into the game first.. I felt like my imagination was getting better when I played DaMaN's waking_dead and the first return_c17 map yesterday.. although we couldn't by any means figure out what to do after restoring the power to the warehouse.. it was a Russian server and they changed everything into Russian language via mapadd so we went desperate and used 'votemap'..

Btw. it's a real compliment for me when you say that this small thingy reminds you of Tysn's maps.. thanks for that.